Six weeks ago, my son Charlie and I travelled up from London with Simon Hughes – to leaflet on behalf of Elwyn Watkins in the Oldham by-election. The campaign was fantastic: dozens of Lib Dems in a well-equipped campaign office and many more leafleting and campaigning on the streets. It produced an excellent result in difficult circumstances: Elwyn even increased his share of the vote to 31.9%.

On Saturday, I was selected as the PPC for the forthcoming Barnsley Central by-election, to be held on March 3rd. At the 2010 general election, the Lib Dems came second to Labour in …

Consulting my calendar recently, I was astonished to see that I visited the Oldham East and Saddleworth by-election for the first time on 17th and 18th November. A long time ago. I don’t mention this to boast (oh, all right I do!) but to highlight that the Liberal Democrat campaign started in earnest very early. I remember wistfully that “GUILTY” tabloid – that word in red dominating the front page in size 94 font (I think). A classic of understatement.

My return for a couple of days at the beginning of last week confirmed that our campaign was as good as …

After all the anticipation and build-up, yesterday’s Oldham East and Saddleworth by-election was a bit of a damp squib.

Labour retained the seat with a decent and improved majority, as would be expected of the only major opposition party. The Lib Dems held our own, Elwyn Watkins nudging up the share of the vote he received in May 2010, but not surprisingly proving unable to break the 30-year run of governing parties not gaining at by-elections. And the Conservative vote collapsed after a half-hearted campaign, provoking a few squeals from activists and a shrug of indifference from their party leader.

Last night, at 3am, I got to do the job of telling everyone how well we did in Oldham despite the fact that we lost… I’m aware that there are few things more clichéd than a politician who loses an election and makes this statement, but in our case it’s actually true. This result provides a good stepping stone towards the Welsh Assembly, Scottish Parliament and English council elections.

In Elwyn Watkins we had first class candidate and I am hugely impressed by the way he has handled this by-election and everything that lead up to it. By taking on Phil Woolas and challenging his dirty campaign, Elwyn made a significant leap in the fight towards cleaning up politics for good and for that we should all be grateful.

The election in Oldham East & Saddleworth has been the perfect opportunity for us as a party to come together after what has been, let’s be honest, a very difficult few months. Vast numbers of volunteers descended on Oldham to lend a hand from across the country and many more who could not make it to Oldham, got involved in other ways from telephone canvassing to addressing envelopes!

It was great to see Nick out rallying the troops and walking up and down the icy lanes to speak to voters and deliver leaflets, as well as many of our fantastic team of ministers joining the ranks, such as Scottish Secretary Michael Moore – who got stuck in to the polling day knock-up yesterday getting our voters out to the polling stations! Never before has a by-election been more cathartic and unifying for our party.

Commenting on the by-election result in Oldham East and Saddleworth, Deputy Prime Minister and Liberal Democrat Leader, Nick Clegg, said:

This was a very hard-fought contest but we were not able to gain this Labour seat on this occasion. I’d like to pay tribute to our superb candidate, Elwyn Watkins, and his team up in Oldham who have run an exceptional campaign.

I am proud of each and every one of the hundreds of activists and volunteers who have brought the fight to Labour’s front door in a way that will have confounded our critics.